Winemaker Notes
A rich, dark golden honey color with intense perfumed nose of complex spice, cloves and vanilla. Developed secondary flavors of orange marmalade and dark chocolate. An intriguing and ever-evolving wine. The bold, sweet palate is perfectly balanced by tight acidity which results in a long-lingering honeyed finish.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
The first wine to be blended by the 'new' team in 2012, further time in bottle has added complexity on the palate. Intensely aromatic with a medium-burnished gold hue and nutty, clove and honeysuckle/jasmine notes on the nose. Acidity is more prominent here but cuts through the richness, with mellow oak and orange-marmalade zest on the finish. A highly impressive Vin de Constance with 150g/l rs which is in great shape for further maturation. Drinking Window 2020 - 2040
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2008 Vin de Constance is the latest release from the estate. “We were happy with the 2008,” Matthew told me. “But it was tough to follow-up a great vintage. It spent a slightly shorter time in barrel and has 160g/L residual sugar with a pH of 3.6. It had the lowest volatile acidity in a Vin de Constance in a long time. To me the 2008 is more toward the older style of Vin de Constance.” It already offers a very complex bouquet with fresh pineapple, quince, Japanese yuzu, just a hint of grass clippings and then later mille fieulle. It is obviously tightly wound at the moment, but extremely well focused. The palate is medium-bodied with a fine viscous entry that immediately comes across as very elegant and refined. It feel smooth and pure – gentle in the mouth, caressing the senses with its quince and marmalade tinged finish with a suggestions of shaved ginger on the aftertaste. Returning after 40 minutes, the finish has mellowed and attained a beguiling effervescent quality, almost like an unctuous Lucozade! Wonderful.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
With an important wine renaissance in full swing, impressive red and white bargains abound in South Africa. The country has a particularly long and rich history with winemaking, especially considering its status as part of the “New World.” In the mid-17th century, the lusciously sweet dessert wines of Constantia were highly prized by the European aristocracy. Since then, the South African wine industry has experienced some setbacks due to the phylloxera infestation of the late 1800s and political difficulties throughout the following century.
Today, however, South Africa is increasingly responsible for high-demand, high-quality wines—a blessing to put the country back on the international wine map. Wine production is mainly situated around Cape Town, where the climate is generally warm to hot. But the Benguela Current from Antarctica provides brisk ocean breezes necessary for steady ripening of grapes. Similarly, cooler, high-elevation vineyard sites throughout South Africa offer similar, favorable growing conditions.
South Africa’s wine zones are divided into region, then smaller districts and finally wards, but the country’s wine styles are differentiated more by grape variety than by region. Pinotage, a cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault, is the country’s “signature” grape, responsible for red-fruit-driven, spicy, earthy reds. When Pinotage is blended with other red varieties, like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah or Pinot Noir (all commonly vinified alone as well), it is often labeled as a “Cape Blend.” Chenin Blanc (locally known as “Steen”) dominates white wine production, with Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc following close behind.